


The Angel on the Battlefield

by Spark_Writer



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief, Other, Post Reichenbach, Reunion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:06:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spark_Writer/pseuds/Spark_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is devastated by Sherlock's suicide and Sherlock is determined to return to John, no matter what the cost.</p><p> "London was a battlefield. Friendship was a battlefield.  Life with Sherlock had been a battlefield."</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Angel on the Battlefield

The coffee was ready.

John poured the scalding liquid into two mugs and, with clinical precision, placed two sugar cubes in one and left the other as it was. He stared at the coffee mugs for a long moment.

"Coffee's ready," he said, in a half-whisper. He lifted the first mug, as though toasting the empty room, then released it and let it smash to the floor. It bled rivulets of brown onto the rug.

"Oh god," John murmured.  He rested his forehead against the wall and bit back a sob.

John H Watson was not insane. He was coping with a grief so utterly profound it took him to his most primal place of emotional competence. He was by turns ferocious, guilty, devastated, gloomy, satirical, and pensive. He acted very strangely sometimes, and Mrs. Hudson would sit in the flat and ask him for "just another cup of tea, dear," because she wouldn't leave him alone in such a dark state of mind. Like a room hung with picture frames crooked a little to the left, nothing felt right any longer. Flashes of the old life came to John in quiet moments; flickers of violin songs, ridiculous quarrels and Cluedo boards jackknifed roughly to the mantle. Often he awoke in the middle of the night, bewildered and bereft, certain he had just heard a haunting baritone calling to him from the kitchen.

If John thought he'd sustained damage when returning from Afghanistan, it was nothing compared to what he lived with now. Civilian, soldier, civilian. That was the process, that was how it should be. But John was caught between worlds; a soldier struggling across the battlefield toward home, leaving his dearest friend in the dirt. He had lived through so much and been hurt so deeply that there was no way he could carry on as a civilian, or ever disremember the things he had seen. He knew better than most that battlefields weren't always defined by open skies and bullets. He learned to see them everywhere, in everything. London was a battlefield.  Friendship was a battlefield.  Life with Sherlock had been a battlefield.

There had been a war, and no one could ever convince John otherwise. What other name was there for such heightened human experience of survival, trust, betrayal, fear and reckless courage? It had brought out the best and worst in everybody and as the dust began to clear, John's heartache lessened somewhat. For when good and evil took their own lives, the scale leveled and it seemed the world was gifted a chance to start anew on a foundation of its mistakes. Still, John could not forget what he and Sherlock once had together, or what could have been had Sherlock simply walked away from the rooftop's edge. It could have been magnificent. But John would never know.

_This is the way the world ends._

_This is the way the world ends._

_This is the way the world ends._

_Not with a bang, but a whimper._


End file.
